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Progressive Reconstructionism is a loosely-knit interfaith community found primarily in the developed world. It comprises activist adherents of Reconstructionist Judaism (and of some other Jewish traditions), the Christian left, progressiveHindus, Buddhists. Muslims, left-leaning Neopagans, Wiccans, and members of other faiths. This community also includes progressives who follow a spiritual practice but adhere to no particular religion or tradition, considering themselves to be "spiritual but not religious", as well as agnostics, non-theists, and secular humanists. Some of the key current proponents are Michael Lerner, Starhawk, and Matthew Fox.
Among the seminal ideas leading to Progressive Reconstructionism have been Jewish Renewal, the Social Gospel and Liberation Theology, Reclaiming Wicca, and Creation Spirituality. Some of the main centers of study and organizing in this movement are the Network of Spiritual Progressives, Wisdom University, Naropa University, The Chaplaincy Institute, California Institute of Integral Studies, the Institute of Noetic Sciences, Reclaiming, Muslim WakeUp! magazine, and the Yahoo! independent catholic Blog (called, "The Old-Catholic Churches").
As an interfaith and progressive movement, it is not to be confused with Dominion Theology, the so-called "Christian Reconstructionism" and Theonomy of such right-wingmillennialists as R.J. Rushdooney and his colleagues, North, Bahnsen, et al. Progressive Reconstructionism is also different from the Polytheistic Reconstructionist religions, though both movements include individuals and groups who identify as Polytheists or Pagans, and the Polytheists and the Progressives have more in common with one another than does either group with the "Christian Reconstructionists".
It is grounded in the prophetic and mystical traditions of the world's religions.
It seeks to carry out the individual's experience of a spiritual new way of being (metanoia) onto a broad community level through a basic program of spirituality-in-action.
It carries forward what it views as spirituality's perpetual process of renewal.
It seeks to bring creativity, relevance, joy, and an all-embracing awareness to spiritual practice, as a path to healing human hearts and minds, and to finding balance and wholeness (holiness).
It seeks to revive and renew spiritual practice, ritual, ceremony, and language to enhance the inspiration of awe, inter-connection, and empowerment in both the individual and the community.
It acts to be inclusive and welcoming and to respect all peoples.
It seeks to help to heal the world by promoting justice, freedom, responsibility, caring for all life and for the Earth that sustains life.
Basic program of spirituality-in-action
Progressive Reconstructionists note that, in the developed world — especially in the United States, institutions and social practices are judged efficient, rational and productive to the extent that they maximize money and power. Progressive Reconstructionists advocate a new "bottom line" that these things should be judged rational, efficient and productive not only to the extent that they maximize money and power, but also to the extent that they maximize caring, ethical and ecological sensitivity and behavior, kindness and generosity, non-violence and peace, and to the extent that they enhance human capacities to respond to other human beings in a way that honors them as embodiments of the sacred, and enhances their capacities to respond to the Earth and the whole universe with awe, wonder and radical amazement — and to the extent that they maximize love.
They propose and engage in a process of challenging what they perceive to be the misuse of religion, God and spirit by the Religious Right. This includes educating people of faith to the understanding that a serious commitment to God, religion and spirit should manifest in social activism aimed at peace, universal disarmament, social justice with a preferential option for the needs of the poor and the oppressed, a commitment to end poverty, hunger, homelessness, inadequate education and inadequate health care all around the world, and a commitment to nuclear non-proliferation, environmental protection and repair of the damage done to the planet by 150 years of environmentally irresponsible behavior in industrializing societies.
They propose and engage in challenging the many anti-religious and anti-spiritual assumptions and behaviors that have increasingly become part of the liberal culture, while challenging as well the extremist individualism and "me-first-ism" that Progressive Reconstructionists believe permeates all parts of the global market culture. They seek to educate people in social change movements to carefully distinguish between their legitimate critiques of the Religious Right and their illegitimate generalizing of those criticisms to all religious or spiritual beliefs and practices. They endeavor to help social change activists and others in the liberal and progressive culture become more conscious of and less afraid to affirm their own inner spiritual yearnings and to reconstitute a visionary progressive social movement that incorporates the spiritual dimension, of which the loving, spiritually elevating and connecting aspects of religion has been one expression (but so has the group-in-fusion experience of the movements of the 1930s and the 60s and the communitarian aspirations of many other efforts—social healing and health care, progressive summer camps, the wide appeal of service and service learning, the women's spirituality movement etc.).
Modern Paganism, also known as Contemporary Paganism and Neopaganism, is a collective term for new religious movements influenced by or derived from the various historical pagan beliefs of pre-modern peoples. Although they share similarities, contemporary Pagan religious movements are diverse, and do not share a single set of beliefs, practices, or texts. Most academics who study the phenomenon treat it as a movement that is divided into different religions; others characterize it as a single religion of which different Pagan faiths are denominations.
New Age is a term applied to a range of spiritual or religious beliefs and practices that grew rapidly in the Western world during the 1970s. Precise scholarly definitions of the New Age differ in their emphasis, largely as a result of its highly eclectic structure. Although analytically often considered to be religious, those involved in it typically prefer the designation of spiritual or Mind, Body, Spirit and rarely use the term New Age themselves. Many scholars of the subject refer to it as the New Age movement, although others contest this term and suggest that it is better seen as a milieu or zeitgeist.
Reconstructionist Judaism is a modern Jewish movement that views Judaism as a progressively evolving civilization and is based on the conceptions developed by Mordecai Kaplan (1881–1983). The movement originated as a semi-organized stream within Conservative Judaism and developed from the late 1920s to 1940s, before it seceded in 1955 and established a rabbinical college in 1967.
Hellenism, the Hellenic ethnic religion, also commonly known as Hellenismos,Hellenic Polytheism, and occasionally Dodekatheism (Δωδεκαθεϊσμός), comprises various religious movements which revive or reconstruct ancient Greek religious practices, and which have publicly emerged since the 1990s.
Spiritual is the adjective for spirit.
Starhawk is an American writer, teacher and activist. She is known as a theorist of feminist Neopaganism and ecofeminism. She is a columnist for Beliefnet.com and for On Faith, the Newsweek/Washington Post online forum on religion. Her book The Spiral Dance (1979) was one of the main inspirations behind the Goddess movement. In 2013, she was listed in Watkins' Mind Body Spirit magazine as one of the 100 Most Spiritually Influential Living People.
A chaplain is, traditionally, a cleric, or a lay representative of a religious tradition, attached to a secular institution such as a hospital, prison, military unit, intelligence agency, embassy, school, labor union, business, police department, fire department, university, sports club, or private chapel.
Interfaith dialogue refers to cooperative, constructive, and positive interaction between people of different religious traditions and/or spiritual or humanistic beliefs, at both the individual and institutional levels. It is distinct from syncretism or alternative religion, in that dialogue often involves promoting understanding between different religions or beliefs to increase acceptance of others, rather than to synthesize new beliefs.
Spiritual ecology is an emerging field in religion, conservation, and academia recognizing that there is a spiritual facet to all issues related to conservation, environmentalism, and earth stewardship. Proponents of Spiritual Ecology assert a need for contemporary conservation work to include spiritual elements and for contemporary religion and spirituality to include awareness of and engagement in ecological issues.
Celtic Reconstructionist Paganism is a polytheistic reconstructionist approach to Celtic neopaganism, emphasising historical accuracy over eclecticism such as is found in many forms of Neo-druidism. It is an effort to reconstruct and revive, in a modern Celtic cultural context, pre-Christian Celtic religions.
Polytheistic reconstructionism is an approach to modern paganism first emerging in the late 1960s to early 1970s, which gathered momentum starting in the 1990s. Reconstructionism attempts to re-establish historical polytheistic religions in the modern world, in contrast with neopagan syncretic movements like Wicca, and "channeled" movements like Germanic mysticism or Theosophy.
Pastoral care is a contemporary term for an ancient model of emotional, social and spiritual support that can be found in all cultures and traditions. The term is considered inclusive of distinctly non-religious forms of support, as well as support for people from religious communities.
Spiritual left refers to a spiritually or religiously based position that shares the social transformative vision of the left and its commitment to social justice, peace, economic equality, and ecological consciousness, but who base their commitment on spiritual or religious traditions.
Interfaith Officiants perform private weddings, commitment ceremonies, funerals, baby namings/welcomings, memorial services, vow renewals, handfastings, adoption ceremonies, family unions, ship christenings, home blessings, and other life-cycle events. They may also perform nontraditional religious or Humanist ceremonies in a variety of settings including on a beach, in a park, by the ocean, in the mountains, on a ski slope, at a banquet hall or at an event center. Interfaith Officiants are trained in world religions and inter-spirituality, and can assist people in identifying their own spiritual beliefs through a process of spiritual self-discovery.
Dan Ehrenkrantz is an American Reconstructionist rabbi, currently serving as the outgoing president of the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College in Wyncote, Pennsylvania.
Spiritual naturalism, or naturalistic spirituality combines a naturalist approach to spiritual ways of looking at the world. Spiritual naturalism may have first been proposed by Joris-Karl Huysmans in 1895 in his book En Route.
Coming into prominence as a writer during the 1870s, Huysmans quickly established himself among a rising group of writers, the so-called Naturalist school, of whom Émile Zola was the acknowledged head...With Là-bas (1891), a novel which reflected the aesthetics of the spiritualist revival and the contemporary interest in the occult, Huysmans formulated for the first time an aesthetic theory which sought to synthesize the mundane and the transcendent: "spiritual Naturalism".
Engaged spirituality refers to religious or spiritual people who actively engage in the world in order to transform it in positive ways while finding nurturance, inspiration and guidance in their spiritual beliefs and practices. The term was inspired by engaged Buddhism, a concept and set of values developed by the Vietnamese Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh. Engaged spirituality encompasses people committed to social change from all the major faith traditions as well as people who refer to themselves as "spiritual but not religious". It has numerous iterations in practice yet common themes unite the many forms it takes. For some in the Catholic tradition, liberation theology guides their form of engaged spirituality.
Elijah Interfaith Institute is a nonprofit, international, UNESCO-sponsored interfaith organization which was founded by Rabbi Alon Goshen-Gottstein in 1997.
Nahid Angha is a Sufi scholar, author, lecturer and human-rights activist. She is the co-director and co-founder of the International Association of Sufism (IAS), founder of the International Sufi Women Organization, the executive editor of the journal Sufism: An Inquiry, the main representative of the IAS to the United Nations, and the creator of the Building Bridges of Understanding Series. She has written over twenty published books and many articles, and has lectured on Sufism, spirituality, human rights and peace at the United Nations; at the Smithsonian Institution; at Science and Spirituality, Italy; at the Council for a Parliament of the World's Religions (CPWR) conferences in Cape Town, and in Barcelona; UNESCO's culture of peace conference in Mexico, among others. She was among the distinguished Sufi leaders and scholars invited to gather for the first annual Shakir World Encounters in Marrakesh, Morocco in 2004. She is the first Muslim woman inducted to the Marin Women's Hall of Fame, honored at Visionary Marin in 2012 by the Marin Interfaith Council, and the Huffington Post named her as one of the 50 Powerful Women Religious Leaders To Celebrate On International Women's Day, 2014. She has been an active advocate for human rights with a focus on women's rights.
Rabbi Dayle A. Friedman is a pioneer in the development of a Jewish spiritual vision for aging, spiritual care and healing. She was the founding director of Hiddur: The Center for Aging and Judaism at the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College, which provided education, spiritual resources, and scholarship for elders and their caregivers.
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